


the songbirds keep singing

by OccasionallyCreative



Series: let's get the shit kicked out of us by love. [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Photographer Ben Solo, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21890557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative
Summary: It's been two months since Rey got married to Poe Dameron. He recommended his best friend, Ben Solo, for recording their wedding video, which felt like a good idea at the time - even though he clearly dislikes Rey, and she hasn't been too fond of him in the past, it did save on the budget.Two months on though, and still no wedding video.It's time to confront the petulant, sullen photographer.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: let's get the shit kicked out of us by love. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576099
Comments: 7
Kudos: 77





	the songbirds keep singing

**Author's Note:**

> This is angsty, but I promise there'll be a second part to this one and a HEA included. TRoS gave me a need for all the HEAs 😂 😭
> 
> Based on the Juliet/Peter/Mark love triangle, and the scene where Juliet sees Mark's wedding video.

“Heel, Beebee.” Rey tugs gently on the corgi’s lead, steering him through a thicker part of the crowd.

She’s on her way home, passing underneath the Christmas lights of Oxford Street and sliding past the trickle of busy families and people laden with shopping bags that are filled to bursting with brightly coloured presents when she remembers. It’s been two months.

Two months of getting used to her wedding ring, her new surname. And two months later, she still doesn’t have the video of the day she obtained both.

Her feet take her to Ben Solo’s flat, more than her head. Her husband’s his best friend, she’s been there enough times, trying to make conversation with her husband’s sullen, quiet mate, that she doesn’t need to remember the way. It’s just there.

Meeting Ben was weird. He’d met her at the open bar of the wedding of a friend of a friend. London’s a big city, but inevitably, a person crashes into a person. That, or a person silently, miserably, clinks glasses with the person next to them at an open bar.

They’d said no words to each other. In fact, he’d just grunted when she’d attempted to ask his name, giving her an unnerving stare when she tried to make conversation.

His stare moved (and stayed fixed on) the contents of his glass when Poe approached. He patted Ben’s back, then kissed her cheek in quick succession.

Ben’s flat is situated down a small cobbled side street, with a door that looks like it’s been kicked in a few times and haphazardly repaired a few times—probably by a careless landlord.

She knocks, hearing the muffled sound of afternoon television, which is quickly shut off. Rey’s got the snarky comment prepared, determined to snatch the high ground before his moody glares can, and gets halfway through before she registers the sight before her.

“Well, Mr Solo, I hope you’ve reconsidered – oh. Um—” She fights back a blush. He stands there, an American in the middle of a British winter, topless with jeans that sit on his hips. Rey swallows, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She brings out the chocolate bar tucked in her jacket pocket. “Twix?”

He’s silent in return.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she replies, with a half chuckle. She tucks it back inside. “Thank the Lord. You’d have broken my heart if you’d said yes.”

“Hm. Lucky you.”

He still stands there, unabashedly without a shirt.

“Don’t you have a t-shirt or something? Aren’t you cold?”

“I grew up in New York.”

“Is it known for cold winters?”

He glances out to the street, lifting his head to the sky, his eyebrows disappearing up into his hairline. His hair is a stupid hipster level of fluff.

“Yes,” he says stiffly, after a moment of silence.

“Okay.” Enough of this. Rey rolls her shoulders, standing a little straighter. “Can I come in?”

“Seems you already are,” he mutters as she slides past him. Rey rolls her eyes.

“I was just passing,” she retorts, clicking her tongue to bring Beebee back to her side. His flat is a stupid level of hipster, just like his hair. Minimalistic, with his photographs, moody black and white, hung up on some exposed brick.

Rey folds her arms across her chest as she turns on her heel, facing him.

“We need to talk,” she says bluntly. Ben shuts the door, giving a sharp nod.

“Okay.”

“About the wedding video.”

“It’s not ready yet.”

Rey frowns, her eyebrows knitting together. “It’s… been two months, Ben.” 

He’s silent again, slowly pulling a t-shirt over his head. As his silence increases, unchanging like a stone wall, she tries a different tack. 

“I know I’m not your favourite person in the world – you’ve barely spoken a word to me – but…”

“It’s not you,” he says like he’s splintering his lips apart just to speak. He’s got that intense stare, with his frown that’s often sketched between his brows and visible in the slight scrunch of his nose.

“Then what is it? Because it was Poe’s day too and even if you hate me for the rest of all time, you can’t—”

“I lost it.”

Rey feels like he’s dumped a bucket of ice over her. She blinks.

“What?” His lips thin, refusing to answer. “So, I’m left with that horrible blue thing?”

Wobbling images, aquamarine and scratchy, and she’d leapt on the phone to Poe to tell him at work, and he’d promised to ask Ben about it when he got the first chance. 

She’d ended up calling Ben herself. Fast forward two months and it turns out the video (promised again and again and again) doesn’t exist at all.

“Please tell me you’re joking,” she says, with a soft scoff. as she drops her hands to her sides.

“It’s somewhere,” he says, his frown slipping just a little. Crumbling even. He clears his throat, walking past her. “Amongst all this, uh, stuff – I’ve had a look. I’ll have another, later.”

Relief rushes through her as she looks at the pile of DVDs he gestures to, all labelled carefully. Save one. There’s a scrawl across, but she sees the words “Poe” and “Rey”.

“No need,” she says with a happy sigh of relief. She grabs the DVD, holding it up between them as she turns to face him. “Found it! Do you mind if I have a look at it now? Just briefly.”

“It still needs,” Ben lets out a breath, blowing out his cheeks, “editing—”

“It’s been two months,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow. She settles into his leather couch, grabbing the DVD remote. “Which one's – ah, okay. Play.”

She presses play.

Ben’s got this curved HDTV screen, thanks to his inheritance (Poe still talks about Ben’s mum fondly, and Rey regrets not having been able to meet her). It’s good for gaming apparently, and she’s more than once picked Poe up from this flat, having to drag him away from The Witcher.

The glossy screen brings up a sound of The Wedding March and the whites and yellows of a summer wedding.

Rey grins.

She watches herself for a moment, walking down the aisle. She giggles at the height difference between her and Maz.

“Maz cried when I asked her to walk me down the aisle,” she murmurs, watching as Maz goes up on tiptoe, in her double-breasted suit, to kiss Rey’s cheeks. She pats the small of Rey’s back as Rey approaches the altar.

“Oh, there’s Poe.” Well, a glance of him at least. The camera focuses on her, and how widely, how brightly, she smiles while off-screen, the priest recites the vows she’s about to take.

On the screen, she bites her lip. A flash of nerves.

Watching it, she remembers the sudden swoop in her belly, anxious, as she realised that she was about to be Mrs Rey Dameron. Before, she’d just been Rey. In school, at work, around friends. Just Rey.

On the television, Just Rey, about to be Mrs Dameron, glances at the camera.

Sitting on Ben’s sofa, among his pictures and the exposed brick, she sees a pang of loneliness in the girl.

Rey swallows, crossing her legs. “I look quite pretty,” she says lamely as the camera zooms in on her brown eyes.

She glances towards Ben. He’s stoic but avoiding looking at her. He looks instead at the television. The images flit across his pale skin.

The back of her neck, her wedding dress, as she leaves the church as Mrs Dameron. She presses her lips to Poe’s, and all the camera catches of Poe is his jaw and mouth. She sees her smile, as the kiss seamlessly becomes a second, and she watches herself, Mrs Dameron, giggle, giddy, against her husband’s kiss.

Outside the church, the camera focuses in on her fingers move while she adjusts her skirts, and the second brief flicker in her eyes as the priest comes up to her and congratulates her.

Mrs Rey Dameron catches sight of the camera and wrinkles her nose at the camera operator.

It had been Poe’s suggestion. Why fork out for a photographer when his childhood friend was one, good at what he did, and reliable at that?

The picture cuts to a couple, Rose and Finn, and they congratulate the newly titled Damerons. “To the power couple of London!” is their toast, and the camera blurs for a moment, then focuses on the entrance to the reception venue. She’s arrived, with Poe following on behind. The camera cuts out again.

Rey can barely breathe.

The scene returns. The crowd is dancing. Poe is dancing with an old friend of Leia’s, Amilyn. Rey is the middle of the crowd, guiding a little girl around the dance floor while the cheesy music plays. (The DJ was very cheap and very terrible.) The camera follows her smile, and the way her bun has come half-undone, thick tendrils framing her face

“That’s great!” Rey says to the girl, grinning and twirling the girl. “You’re so good at this!”

Then it’s later at night, at the docks. The path to the boat was strewn with fairy lights, she remembers, but as the camera follows her and Poe down the ramp, it catches the smile she throws over her shoulder.

It catches how her fingers grip Poe’s as he helps her board the boat, and the wave she gives the crowd, calling well wishes and congratulations off-screen.

“They’re…"

The final shot is her, waving, surrounded by balloons and the lights of the boat, with Poe’s arm around her waist. He kisses her cheek.

The DVD ends, and the menu returns.

Rey swallows.

"But I’m… but you hate me.” Rey’s brows knit together in a frown as she stands, her legs feeling like jelly. She grips Beebee’s lead. She swallows. “I’m no-one.”

“Not to me.”

He finally looks at her. He looks weighed down.

“You can, uh, make your own way out. There’s, there’s a key. I’ve got an… early lunch,” he says vaguely, even though it’s 10 past 11. Shoving his hand into his back pocket, he grabs his leather jacket as he leaves.

And Rey, left alone, can’t help but wonder, if, in another universe, if he’d found her first, her wedding ring would feel as heavy on her finger as it does right now.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/luminoustico), [tumblr](https://luminoustico.tumblr.com/) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/shmi)! Be warned though: I'm talking spoilers!


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